Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality

Part I

Miss Poppy has better things to do than to imagine, and worry and fret about, what other consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom. There is, for instance, feeding the poor: three million children in the United States go to bed hungry every night. Then there is sheltering the homeless: the average age of a homeless person in the United States is nine. And there is companioning the sick and lonely: which, luckily, Miss Poppy can do in any cocktail lounge in America any day of the week. And finally, there is ministering to those imprisoned. Miss Poppy chooses the last of Jesus' commandments, from the end of Matthew 25, to justify adding one more essay to the plethora of writings explaining why homosexuality is not a sin. Miss Poppy does this to minister to those imprisoned by fear and ignorance, who come to Christianity expecting a stamp of approval on their prejudices.

I've discussed this issue (yeah, I'm tired of the third person) for more than eight years, with every yahoo with a keyboard. I say "yahoo" not to be insulting but to describe the quality of the arguments which, when confronted with logic, have quickly devolved into "I know you are, but what am I?" and other such puerile rejoinders. Not one argument has been able to keep its head above water when pushed to its logical ends.

Most arguments revolve around the "seven texts of terror," as described in Reverend Nancy Wilson's book "Tribe." These are Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Timothy 1:9-10, 1 Corinthians, 6:9, and Jude 7. Those who believe in a selectively literal interpretation of the Bible will occasionally toss in the other odd verse, verses that require the most extreme stretching of the imagination to correlate to an early 21st century conception of "homosexuality." As tedious as it is, I'll address each of these texts—doubling up on those that basically say the same thing as another.

GENESIS 19

This is the story of Sodom. In a nutshell, two angels visit Lot and he treats them to dinner and convinces them to stay the night. Outside a group of men gather asking to "know" the men staying with Lot—to "know" them in the "Biblical" sense. Lot discourages the crowd by offering his daughters, telling the men they can do whatever they want to them. The daughters are refused. A tense evening ensues where the angels strike the men outside the door blind and in the morning Lot and his family escape unharmed.

First, what is interpreted by conservative Christians as potential "homosexual" acts are not the worst "crimes" that occur that night. The fact that Lot offers his daughters to be gang-raped by a mob of violent men is abhorrent and supports the idea that God considers women to be of the same worth as farm animals, definitely of less value than two strangers who have stopped by for a visit. Remember, Lot was considered a righteous man, and the offering of his daughters for gang rape passes without Biblical comment, or the ruffling of angelic feathers.

That conservative Christians use this passage to condemn loving, consensual same-sex relationships while they remain virtually oblivious to the crime of offering one's daughters to be gang-raped by a violent mob speaks volumes about the upside-down world that harbors their priorities. Because this crime against humanity (women being, in my own mushy liberal-Christian point of view, part of humanity) is completely overlooked, conservative Christians miss the fact that these men would have raped women, or men. They weren't particular.

In fact, in a strikingly similar story, in Judges 19, a woman is offered to a mob of men to be gang-raped, in lieu of the man they originally asked for, and the offer is taken. The woman is raped all night and later killed and dismembered by her lover, the twelve pieces sent to the twelve tribes of Israel

It is a distinct injustice that conservative Christians link the act of rape with sexual preference. The Pope, in addressing the rape of young boys by priests, suggests as a remedy a more stringent screening out of "homosexual" priests, ignoring the fact that many of these priests rape young girls in their charge, as well. Again we see the mistaken notion that the rape of a male is more serious and damaging than the rape of a female. The rapes of young women by priests are virtually ignored. Sexism is one explanation, another is that "homosexual rape" captures and titillates the conservative Christian imagination to a greater and more prurient degree than does the rape of a young girl. It's almost as if rape is what females are there for, so why make an issue of it? Every 60 seconds a woman is raped in the United States. Yet what captures the headlines? A priest raping a young boy.

The gender of a rape victim does not determine the sexual preference of the rapist. If that were the case we should disallow both homosexual and heterosexual men from becoming priests and ministers. Rapists are rapists, not because of their sexual preference, but because they rape. The linking of the act of rape with sexual preference leaves unassigned the sexual preference of the man of God that rapes both boys and girls and illustrates how lacking in merit this linking is.

The "Sin of Sodom" Accoding to God

As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters. Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.Ezekiel 16:48-50

Sodomites

Verses in the Bible that refer to sodomites reflect an English translation of the Hebrew word qadesh, as in 1 Kings 15:12,

"And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made."1 Kings 15:12

"And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove."2 Kings 23:7

The Roman temple to Baal Shamayim at Kadesh

The Hebrew term asherah is translated as for the grove in the latter verse. Asherah is described, in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, as "a Babylonian (Astarte)-Canaanite goddess (of fortune and happiness), the supposed consort of Baal, her images; a) the goddess, goddesses; b) her images; c) sacred trees or poles set up near an altar."

These verses have to do with idolatry, not homosexuality. Even Strong's Exhaustive Concordance defines the term translated as sodomite as male temple prostitute. The qadeshim were the holy ones, devotees of the goddess Asherah. In Job 5:1 and 15:5 the qadosh are referred to, meaning sacred, holy, Holy One, saint, set apart. One must remember that there are no vowels in the original Hebrew, that these are added based on context and tradition. The qadosh could easily be the equivalent, in terms of holiness, to the qadesh.

The term sodomite was imposed upon this priestly, yet rival, class of men by translators with no compunction about correlating them to a completely unrelated event, the destruction of Sodom.

مشاركة: Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."
Leviticus 18:22

"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."
Leviticus 20:13

Conservative Christians who know little to nothing of the First Testament, including the 10 commandments (only 1 in 10 can name them all), have somehow committed this verse to memory. I say "this verse" because most do not know that there are two versions of this passage any more than they know there are three versions of the ten commandments (Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew appearing twice in the First Testament) and three creation stories.

Most conservative Christians I've come in contact with have little use for the First Testament: they use Isaiah to foretell the coming of Christ; Psalm 139 to condemn abortion (while conveniently omitting Psalm 137); Genesis to promote "intelligent design," the mythic story of creation formerly know as "creation science;" and selective passages of the law of Moses to condemn their victim du jour. Beyond that they believe that "Christ fulfilled the law," which explains why they have no problem flaunting the Levitical commands against eating at Red Lobster, shaving, or women wearing pants and men wearing pink or purple Ralph Lauren button-down oxfords, polo shirts, or two-tone pastel Belgian slippers with contrasting piping and tassels.

The easiest way to derail the use of "this verse" to condemn homosexuality is to ask its proponent to tell you what exactly is meant by the words "lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman." I've never met a Christian yet who didn't possess the native intelligence to know he'd be better off to "not go there." The truth is, however, that the black hole of meaning these two verses share cannot be filled with the dateless-bored-late-Saturday-night musings on hot male-on-male action. At best we have to say that we do not know exactly what is meant by "lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman," and decide that it is better not to judge the fate of those on whom we pin these vague and amorphous fantasies.

Technically it is physically impossible for a man to "lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman," if what is being imagined is copulation. This presumptuous is unsettling as the author of these verses saw fit to be more specific in his admonitions against beastiality and adultery. In these verses he used the more specific and unambiguous term translated as "copulation." Had he used this term in the "lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman" verses I would have to grant that, yes, what the conservative Christian imagines is, most likely, what the author meant.

If we are to take the Bible literally, however, we cannot do this. The author applied the Hebrew term shakab to the "thou shalt not lie with" sequence and mishkab to the "as with" woman sequence. Mishkab occurs 46 times in 44 verses, all in the books of Moses. Mishkab generally means "bed," as in Leviticus 15:4 when the scripture states if a man lies in a bed [mishkab] and a woman has bled on the sheets, he is unclean, or as in Numbers 31:17 where God commands that every woman who has been to "bed" [mishkab] with a man (and therefore might be carrying an "unborn baby") should be slain. Yada, yada, yada: all pretty self-explanatory.

Shakab occurs 213 times in 194 verses, so we have plenty of context from which to draw a closer definition of the term. I looked through each of these verses and found that in 101 instances shakab meant to go to bed, or to sleep, in the most innocuous sense. In 51 instances shakab means to "sleep with the fathers," not in any perverse Christian sex fantasy sense, but meaning that they died, as in the "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes" sense. In only one instance does shakab seem to refer to straight-forward vanilla marital sex: Leviticus 15:18, "When a man lies with a woman and there is an emission of semen, both must bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening." Taking into account the rights husbands had then, and wives didn't, it may not be that vanilla. Read on.

Shakab Means "Rape"

In 52 instances (virtually all of the sexual instances) the term shakab is used to describe a sexual encounter typified by deceit or force, in other words, some type of rape. Consider the following examples:

"Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie [shakab] with him, that we may preserve the seed of our father."
Genesis 19:32

Lot's daughters rape their father, at least that's his story, and he's sticking to it.

"And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien [shakab] with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us."
Genesis 26:10

Here Isaac tries to pass his wife, Rebekah, off as his sister. Rightly assuming that Rebekah would not have willingly had sex with any Philistine who offered, we can assume that among the Philistines it was considered a boys-will-be-boys type of issue to rape unmarried Jewish women. Even so the king, Abimelech, delivers an edict forbidding anyone to "molest" Isaac (again with the male rape thing), or his wife.

Previously, in Genesis 20, Abraham had practiced the same deceit with his wife, Sarah. Abimilech, thinking Sarah was Abraham's sister, kidnapped her, with the intention of raping her. He was forced by God to return her to Abraham, to whom he paid a fine.

Next, in Genesis 30, a conversation between two women,

"And she said unto her, Is it a small matter that thou hast taken my husband? and wouldest thou take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie [shakab] with thee to night for thy son's mandrakes."
Genesis 30:15

In this verse Rachel is trading sex for drugs, letting her sister sleep with Jacob, her husband, in exchange for mandrakes.

"And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay [shakab] with her, and defiled her."
Genesis 34:2

"That she called unto the men of her house, and spake unto them, saying, See, he hath brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie [shakab] with me, and I cried with a loud voice:"Genesis 39:14

In this story Joseph, living as a trusted slave in the house of Potifer, is sexually harassed by Potifer's wife. She's after him to have sex with her and he'll have none of it. One day he ends up alone with her and when he realizes this he rushes to get out of the house only escaping by shedding his coat which she has hold of. When Potifer comes home she cries rape, claiming as evidence the coat he "left behind." Joseph is sent to prison.

Assuming that no ewe is "asking for it" we can assume that "lie with" in this instance refers to nonconsensual sex, or rape, albeit of an animal.

"And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man have lain [shakab] with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse:"
Number 5:19

"...If no man have shakab with thee," is contrasted with her willingly having sex with a man not her husband. If it is suspected that a woman has been raped, or had an adulterous affair, she will be forced to drink the bitter water (made from holy water and the sweepings of the church floor), which, it was believed, would make her abort.

"Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay [shakab] with her."
2 Samuel 13:14

"Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished [shakab]."
Isaiah 13:16

"Neither left she her whoredoms brought from Egypt: for in her youth they lay [shakab] with her, and they bruised the breasts of her virginity, and poured their whoredom upon her."
Ezekiel 23:8

When "she" was young they "lay with her and bruised the breast of her virginity." They made this woman into a whore by raping her.

In the United States it did not become illegal for a man to rape his wife until 1993, when marital rape became a crime in all 50 states. Even now, certain exemptions are provided to a husband in the rape of his wife. How much less likely is it that a man was allowed to force himself upon his wife in the time Leviticus was written? Except for shakab there isn't a word in the First Testament used to describe what we think of as rape today. Rape is viewed as a property crime—property is defiled. The perpetrator and the property may be destroyed. Another remedy was that the rapist had to marry his victim. This remedy doesn't consider the damage to the victim, only the reputation of "the property" and the family that owned it (her).

I argue that shekab in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 means that a man shall not force, or in any way coerce, another man to have sex, in the way that a man is allowed to force sex upon his wife. In other words, man is not allowed to rape a man, it is an abomination. The story of Sodom supports this interpretation. Remember that the attempted rape of the "men" in Lot's house is seen as a horrible crime, whereas the attempted rape of his daughters, or the rape of the concubine of Gibeah in Judges 19, passes without comment. Though the verses in Leviticus condemn the rape of a man, they say nothing about healthy, mutual, consensual relations between members of the same sex.

Without the mistranslations of the verses in Genesis and Leviticus the First Testament says nothing about what we today describe as "homosexuality." The First Testament does describe loving relationships between members of the same sex. The author seems to respect the privacy of the subjects of these stories by describing the loving relationships and not the blow-by-blow accounts of hot male-on-male action desired as proof by the lurid conservative Christian. Even "heterosexual" relationships are not described this way, sex being alluded to in terms of the marriage contract, the births of children, and various rapes.

In Deuteronomy 13:6 it is written,

"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers…"

This verse lists a man's relations in order of closeness, descending to ascending: brother, son or daughter, wife, friend which is as thine own soul. This suggests that the man in this society maintains a relationship with another man that is closer than that of his wife, a relationship which is as close "as thine own soul."

This relationship is echoed in 1 Samuel 18:1,

"And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

For the conservative Christian who can read "homosexual sex" into the key passages of Leviticus and NOT see the "homosexual" relationship in Deuteronomy and 1 Samuel, selective literalism has been elevated to a high art form. This art form, however, remains an art, and not a valid argument that the verses in Leviticus condemn homosexuality.

Near Salambo, Carthage. Urns hold the charred remains of children sacrificed to Molech.

Idolatry
The key verses in Leviticus 18 and 20 are flanked by unambiguous references to idolatry. The admonitions are set in contrast to religious ritual supposedly practiced by pagan devotees in the surrounding area.

"And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not: Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people."
Leviticus 20:1-6

And at the end,

"Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people. Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine. A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them."
Leviticus 20:22-27

(Apologies to those bored by reading the context of key verses calling for the death of another human being.)

Thus all the intervening "thou shalt nots" are contextualized by the extended and detailed admonitions of God to be separate and not worship regional idols. The "thou shalt nots" can basically be condensed to prohibit having sex with "anything that moves," as do those "other people." Whether these "other people" actually had sex with animals, or engaged in other such forbidden activities, is no more substantiated than is the Vatican's claim that the sexual abuse of children by priests is the fault of homosexuals.

JEWISH INTERPRETATIONS

Occasionally someone will try to prove the Bible condemns homosexuality by relying on "traditional" interpretations of Hebrew scriptures by conservative Jews. The Christian "Old Testament" is not the same thing as the Hebrew scriptures. Christians do not rely on Jews to interpret their scriptures—otherwise Christians would have to accept the across-the-board, rather than just traditional, Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah. We cannot treat the Hebrew scriptures like a salad bar any more than we can the Christian scriptures

مشاركة: Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality

Part III

ROMANS 1:26, 27

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."

This is the only "text of terror" that throws women into the mix. Even conservative Christians must admit that the key verses in Leviticus are written to and about men.

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."Leviticus 18:22

It makes no sense that this verse be directed to women - a woman shall not lie with a man as a woman lies with a woman? See, it just doesn't have the same pseudo-logical ring to it. These verses were written to men, about men.

Lesbianism would be completely off the hook were it not for the misinterpretation of Romans 1:26. When taken in context the gist of this verse mutates considerably.

A Dionysian phallus meets a bad bris

Romans 1 is similar to the chapters in Leviticus in the sense that Paul's chidings are sandwiched between admonitions against idolatry.

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.Romans 1:18-23

And ending with,

"And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient… Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them."Romans 1:28, 32

So we're talking about people who know better—actually, Christians. The people being spoken of are Christians who have turned from their beliefs and are worshipping an idol, "an image made like to corruptible man (see image, above right), and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things."

What does God do in reaction?

"Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:"Romans 1:24

Wait, where's that part about the "lesbians"? Oh, this is verse 24, addressed presumably to members of the congregation who are not "homosexuals" or "lesbians," in other words "straight" people.

So, when straight Christians "dishonour their own bodies between themselves" that means that no one should engage in heterosexual relations—that because some heterosexual relations are ungodly, then all heterosexual relations are ungodly.

Or, it means that some heterosexual relations are ungodly and some aren't, and some "homosexual" relations are ungodly and some aren't.

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."Romans 1:26,27

If it is assumed that these verses refer to all same sex relations then one is left to explain "the natural use of the woman." What is "the natural use of woman?" Is it to make babies? What of women who cannot, or do not, make babies? Have these also changed their "natural use?" Is it therefore a sin for a woman not to have babies?

Is "the natural use of women" the extinguishment of the burning lust of men? Do women exist to quell the lust and violence of angry raping mobs? Do they exist to satiate the unfettered lust of men, whether willingly or not?

Or do women exist to love and be loved? If this is the answer then the verses here have nothing to do with homosexually but with the dishonoring of bodies whether male or female, straight or gay.

1 TIMOTHY 1:9-10, 1 CORINTHIANS 6:9,10

"Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;"1 Timothy 1: 9,10

Again we have a situation where the verses are written specifically to, and about, men. How can a woman defile herself "with mankind" unless there is some sort of inequitable circumstance that is exploited? She can sell herself to a man, she can extort sex from a man, but these are not the definitions that conservative Christians assign to the phrase in 1 Timothy 6:9, "them that defile themselves with mankind." For conservative Christians this means the vividly imagined hot male-on-male action.

We have the same problem with 1 Corinthians 6:9, for do we prohibit women from being effeminate? No, we want women to be "feminate," or "feminine," which is the sloppy contemporary reading of this term. The Greek term is malakos. The term is used two times in the Gospels, Jesus speaking here,

"But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft [malakos] raiment? behold, they that wear soft [malakos] clothing are in kings' houses."Matthew 11:8

"But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft [malakos] raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts."Luke 7:25

In both instances the term malakos is used in a disdainful manner to describe the soft and delicate existence of those in the royal court.

In Luke 7:19, 20, the verses preceding these, we read,

"And John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to Jesus, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another? When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist hath sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?"

Jesus, having worked up a sweat healing and ministering to people the entire day, answers with the rather smart-ass question, "What did you expect to see? A homosexual?"

No.

Jesus says, "What did you expect to see, a dandy from the King's court, with a manicure, soft hands, gorgeous clothes?" In other words, did you expect a genteel man, or a working Jesus?

In Italy, what used to be the Roman Empire, the contemporary term is "la mollica." Franco Galli explains in his book,

"Italy is divided into two types of bread eaters: those who like 'la crosta'—'the crust'—and those who prefer 'la mollica'—'the crumb.' Proof of this statement is always present on trattoria tables just after the diners have left. Amidst the dirty plates and glasses are clumps of 'la mollica,' the white insides of the bread, evidence that crust lovers ate there, or dark shards of 'la crosta,' confirmation that 'la mollica' partisans have just dined." 1
The surviving sense of the term malakos is the equivalent of the American term "cake eater," a person born with a silver spoon, privileged, who doesn't have to work for, or merit, the benefits that accrue to him.

If we are to assume that the entire Bible is written to both men and women, and not just to men, to later be passed down to their property, women, then we cannot accept that malakos means homosexual, or effeminate.

Proverbs 31 speaks of the "virtuous" woman. The Hebrew term translated as "virtuous" means "strength, might, efficiency, wealth, army." The Latin term vir, from which virtuous derives, means manly. So we see that the Lord wants strong women, mighty women, efficient women, dare we suggest, as the English translator has, manly women?

Neither men, nor women, are to be malakos. Since it's difficult for women, even manly women, to engage in hot male-on-male action we can assume that malakos has nothing to do with this. Besides, not all homosexuals are what we today consider feminine. What of the daddy, the bear, the leather queen? Are homosexuals exempt from seeming admonitions in these verses if they behave in a macho manner?

Arsenokoites

The phrase "for them that defile themselves with mankind" is translated from the Greek term arsenokoites. This term appears two times in two verses, those listed above. The definition of the term is not clear. It is constructed from two words, arrhen, or arsen, meaning a male, a man, a child, or a man child (boy); and koite, meaning bed. koite appears four times in four verses in the Second Testament:

"And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed [koite]; I cannot rise and give thee."Luke 11:*

"And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived [koite] by one, even by our father Isaac;"Romans 9:10

"Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering [koite] and wantonness, not in strife and envying."Romans 13:13

"Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed [koite] undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge."Hebrew 13:4

The first verse suggests a bed, with no sexual connotations. The last three verses suggest a more sexual connotation, in a very heterosexual sense.

So it might seem that adding arseno to koites could mean hot male-on-male action as imagined by conservative Christians, or it could mean men who rape or exploit men, or men who rape boys. (Why should we assume that society would be any more interested back then in men that rape girls than it is now?) Taken with the immediately subsequent criminal "menstealers," this makes better sense. It makes better sense unless one is invested in the Bible being against hot male-on-male action as imagined by the conservative Christian, and not for justice, as in admonitions against the rape and kidnapping of men, boys, and perhaps, we might hope, at some future date, women.

My primary argument against using any of the previous verses, taken in context, to condemn loving same sex relations, is that this view ignores the actual sins of rape and sexual abuse for the specious payoff of gay bashing. One can hold onto this ideal, as if with a monkey's paw, only if one refuses to acknowledge the rape and exploitation of women as a sin against God, nature, and humanity. Therefore, Biblically-sanctioned gay bashing is a sin against all women, because women cannot enjoy the full protection of the law of God and man if she is seen as merely incidental to the stories used to condemn homosexuals, instead of as a valuable human being, a victim in violent and sinful human exploitation.

مشاركة: Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality

Part IV

JUDE 7 AND SUMMARY

I promised to address the "seven texts of terror" so I'll quickly address the last one, Jude 7.

"Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire."

"Strange flesh" in this instance is translated from the Greek term heteros sarx, meaning "different flesh." If this doesn't mean angels then it must mean women, because a homo sexual doesn't "go after" hetero sex. Or, at least in the salaciously and selectively literal Biblical sense, it wouldn't be a sin if he did. Really quite silly.

A final argument used to justify the use of these verses to condemn homosexuality is, "What else could they mean if they don't condemn homosexuality?" What else, indeed? The Bible says we "see through a glass darkly" (1 Corinthians 13), in other words we don't understand everything. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55.

We don't make the Bible true by filling in the blanks with our own prejudices. If we are to err, let us err on the side of mercy and justice.

"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah 6:8

AFTERWORD

Many people write saying that I "twist scripture" to justify my own guilt at being lesbian ("...if you really are a woman," they add). I am not, however, gay. Why do I, a straight woman, care about gay people? Because they are my sisters and brothers. Because I, also, am judged as incidental or inimical to Biblical truth, and find I have more in common with others thusly judged, than I do with those that have the most to gain from exploiting my/our, supposedly inferior status. I care because Jesus does not belong to those who judge—he belongs to "the least of these," the people outside the acceptable religious viewpoint—a viewpoint Jesus fought against and excoriated.

"But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."Matthew 15:9